Make this election about a new deal for cities

Earlier this week, a caller to a local radio show said that the provincial election reminded her of a high school student council election where everyone was promising more cupcake days. While I do love cupcakes, this got me thinking. This election is a pivotal one for all of us — as Albertans and as voters — as we make some fundamental decisions about what kind of a community we want and who we want to be. I think those decisions must include a conversation about cities, which is why the City of Calgary has launched www. citiesmatter.ca.

Let’s start by acknowledging how lucky we are. All political parties are relying on royalty revenue projections that indicate a signifi- cant windfall for Albertans as certain oilsands projects mature and start paying royalties at a much higher rate. Hence the cupcakes. But this also means that we can make some decisions about where we need to invest. Understanding that royalty rates on a nonrenewable resource won’t last forever, what’s the right mix between saving cash, investing in infrastructure, and lowering taxes or rebating money to taxpayers?

This means thinking hard about what the Alberta of the future needs in order for our kids and grandkids to be successful. The No. 1 thing on that list is that we need strong cities — cities that can attract and retain the very best people from around the world who want to live here, work here, invest here, start new businesses and help existing ones grow.

That means we need cities that work. Cities that have the financial capacity to keep citizens alive, safe, healthy and happy by providing services like police, fire and 911, parks and rinks and recreation opportunities, great transit and roads, and clean water. For that to happen, the provincial government needs to fundamentally rethink its relationship with cities, particularly with Calgary and Edmonton. Citiesmatter.ca includes a survey on 10 issues important to cities, from transit to infrastructure to a new legislative framework, and I encourage all Albertans to take a look.

The major parties were invited to respond to the survey, and we’ll have those responses up on the site next week. Fundamentally, though, there are two key issues: authority and money.

People are always sur- prised at just how limited the decision-making authority of city council is. The current structure gives Calgary city council, which has a larger population than five provinces to represent, the same governance ability as a small summer village of 100 people.

One quick example: the province, in a footnote to a footnote of their budget last year, decided to charge a surcharge of $15 per traffic ticket. The City, which pays for the police to enforce the laws, and which writes the tickets, did not have the authority to increase the amount of the ticket to cover this new cost. So, the Province essentially sent us an invoice for over $3 million, which would have had to come out of the police budget.

Thankfully, this decision was eventually reversed, but it speaks to the absurdity of the current system, where an order of government, duly elected by citizens, is charged with delivering services but not given the authority to actually do so.

We also need to talk about money. Only eight cents out of every dollar you pay in taxes goes to your city. In fact, Calgarians as a whole send about four billion dollars more to the province every year than we get back in all grants and services from the province.

On the operating budget, that means that we rely primarily on property taxes and user fees to deliver services. These don’t keep up with growth or the economy very well, so we are always under significant pressure, and, perversely, growth in our population actually hurts us. Each new person moving here costs more in services than they pay in property taxes. We need a better way to fund the services people need.

The problem is even greater on the capital side, where we rely on the generosity of other orders of government even more.

Consider the southeast LRT. This project, which we want to build quickly, will cost about $3 billion. The City’s entire operating budget is $3 billion. It’s impossible to finance this kind of project without a stable, predictable source of funding to pay back the debt over a long period of time. Right now, we don’t have that from either the province or the feds.

So, I encourage all Calgarians to ask MLA candidates the following: What is your vision for Alberta’s cities, and how will you make it real?